Brad Luck
by JoeMerl
Summary: Bradley has a serious accident. And annoyingly, he can't even blame Milo this time. One-shot. Implied one-sided Bradlissa.


**Author's Notes:** I have officially started a movement to make every Friday the 13th Milo Murphy Appreciation Day. I hope that yours is exceptional, and enjoy the celebratory fanfic!

* * *

It was lunchtime, and Bradley had already had a long and annoying day. He finally made it to the cafeteria, trying to ignore the squishing in his shoes, and laid his vacuum-sealed lunchbox on his usual table with a small sigh. He sat down and—

—somehow managed to miss the seat, causing his backside to crash right onto the hard linoleum floor.

"OOF!" Bradley said, immediately sitting up and banging his head on the table. He froze, eyes closed tightly, knowing even before he looked that—

"Oh, hey, Bradley!" said a high-pitched voice from the other end of the table.

Bradley got up and glared at Milo, who was sitting with Zack and Melissa, looking perfectly chipper. " _Milo,_ " he said tersely. "Why aren't you at your usual table?"

"A light fixture broke off and smashed it," Zack said, pointing off in that direction.

Bradley grabbed his lunchbox, turned and walked away without further comment.

He found another table that was empty except for Mort, who was ignoring his food in favor of finishing up his Math homework from the previous night. Bradley sat next to him and began to unpack his lunch, grumbling indistinctly.

"Oh, hey," Mort said, looking up briefly from his work. Then, "What's wrong?"

"I've spent a lot of time around _Milo_ this morning."

Just then, Amanda sat across from them and immediately began to put ketchup on her food. "Can't talk. There was an emergency at the yearbook and I'm already nine-and-a-half minutes behind schedule."

"Did _Milo_ stop by the yearbook this morning?"

"Of course not. He knows he's not allowed after what happened last time."

Mort gave a slight shudder, took a bite of a carrot stick and asked, "Why are you ragging on Milo _this_ time, Bradley?"

"Let's see. You both remember the flat tire on the bus this morning, right?"

"Eh," Mort shrugged.

"I've learned to schedule around them."

"Well, _then_ I went to the computer lab, and right when _Milo_ walks in, there's a power outage, and half an hour of my work got erased!"

"You should learn to save more."

Bradley put down his sandwich so that he could cross his arms over his chest. "And then, _five minutes ago,_ I had to walk ankle-deep in water because the entire north side of the school is flooded."

"Do you even know that that one's Milo's fault?"

"Milo has Mrs. White before lunch. It makes geographic sense," Amanda conceded.

Bradley picked up the sandwich beside him. "All I'm saying is, all of our lives would be a lot easier if _Milo_ wasn't always around to— _AGH!_ "

He gagged, dropping the sandwich that he had just taken a bite of. Mort looked up. "Oh, dude, that's mine," he said, moving it over to his side of the table. "And Milo's sitting across the room, so that one's just you being careless."

Bradley simply spat onto his napkin, then took out his thermos to wash the taste out of his mouth.

Mort turned back to his homework. "Look, all _I'm_ saying is, Milo's a fact of life, so you just can't let him bother you. It's not like he can help it. But you know, my yoga instructor sells some cool-looking good luck charms out of the back of his truck. Maybe if you got something like that, you could—"

"Bradley?" Amanda suddenly interrupted. "Are you feeling alright?"

Mort looked up. Bradley was bent slightly over, holding his stomach, his face contorted into an expression that was half-pained and half-confused.

"Whoa. You okay, man?"

"I don't know, I—" Bradley took a deep breath, which suddenly strangely difficult. An inexplicably horrible feeling was growing in the pit of his stomach, along with acute nausea. He blinked hard as a thought occurred to him.

"Mort? Wh-What kind of sandwich did I just eat?"

"Huh? Um—grilled apples, peanut butter and bacon."

" _Ew!_ " said Amanda, as Bradley gave a strangled gasp.

" _What?_ It's not real bacon."

"No, that's not what I—!" Bradley already felt his breathing begin to quicken; fighting down panic, he reached into his pocket...and then his other pocket...and then his shirt pocket...

"No... _no no no...really?! On TODAY of all days I forget them?!_ Oh." He held his head as a wave of dizziness hit him.

"Dude, what's going on?! Your face is, like...all red."

"I'm going to get a teacher," Amanda said, and quickly swept away.

Feeling like he was about to collapse, Bradley turned and grabbed his friend by the shirt. Mort drew back, startled. He was dimly aware of people from the next table watching the scene in confusion.

"Mort...I need...the nurse... _uggghhh..._ "

Bradley heard Mort shout something, but that was the last thing that he remembered before everything went black.

* * *

The first Bradley noticed when he woke up was that his face hurt. The second was a vague feeling that he was not in his normal bed. The third was Mort saying, "Hey, I think he's waking up!"

Bradley tried to sit up and groaned loudly, forcing his eyes open—on instinct he reached out to grab his glasses from a bedside table, but instead someone placed them in his hand. Putting them on he saw Amanda sitting in a chair beside him, while Mort was standing near the end of his bed. The room was decidedly not his own.

"Where are we?"

"The hospital."

"Hospital...?" Bradley touched his cheek, which felt extremely swollen.

"Do you remember? You had an allergy attack when you accidentally ate some of Mort's peanut butter sandwich."

"Which I am _really, really_ sorry about, by the way."

"It was _so_ scary! How are you feeling?"

Bradley laid back down. "Like my body tried to kill itself over a legume."

"Don't joke, man. Amanda's right, we were really worried. We didn't even know what was happening until Milo showed up."

Bradley, having just finished making himself comfortable in the bed, immediately sat up. "Huh? Why does _Milo_ have to do with any of this?"

As if on cue...

"Hi, everyone! Oh, Bradley, you're awake!'

Bradley winced as the door opened and Milo walked in, followed by Zack and Melissa. (The latter in particular caused Bradley to shrink back under his covers a bit.)

"Hey, man! You had us pretty scared there for a minute," said Zack, sitting gingerly on the end of his bed. "How you feeling?"

"Alive, so...alright, I guess. _Can you please not touch that?!_ " he snapped, as Milo leaned casually against his bedpost.

"Bradley, it's thanks to Milo that you _are_ alive," Amanda said.

" _What?_ "

"Oh...it is not," Milo said, looking faintly embarrassed.

"No, seriously, he was awesome," said Mort. "After you fainted, everybody was crowding around to see what happened, and then Milo managed to _jump over_ everyone—"

"Actually, I more _flew_ over them by accident."

"—and when I told him about the sandwich, he just reached into his backpack and gave you some sort of shot."

" _Really,_ it was nothing! I just assumed that you were having an allergic reaction, so I gave you a standard dose of epinephrine. You really should wear a medical ID bracelet, by the way. It was pretty much luck that I diagnosed you correctly."

"How did you know to do that?" Amanda wondered. "Do you have bad allergies, too?"

"Oh, no...well, except for sloth dander, but that only gives me a rash. I just carry supplies around in case someone _else_ has an allergy attack around me!"

"Why do I get the feeling that happens a lot?" Bradley grumbled.

"Hey, be nice," Mort said. "You're lucky Milo was there—the paramedic said that if he hadn't done that, you could have actually _died._ "

Bradley winced, and in that second, he remembered just how much he could feel his whole body shutting down before he fainted, and the panic that had overtaken him. He really _could_ have died—he almost had the last time that he had peanuts, way back when he was four. Bradley could only dimly remember that incident, but his mom still tended to get teary-eyed whenever she remembered it.

He could have been _dead._ Gone. Forever.

Bradley shook his head, trying to banish the thought.

"Everyone at school is really worried about you, man," Zack was saying. "They're gonna be really glad to hear that you're alright."

Bradley groaned. "The whole _school_ knows about this?"

"Well, yeah. I mean, everybody with our lunch period saw you collapse."

"Even Principal Milder was freaking out." Mort let out a small snort of laughter. "It was actually pretty funny, in retrospect—she had to fight her way through the crowd, and then when she saw Milo crouched beside you, trying to take your pants off, she was, like—"

" _WHAT?!_ "

Mort, Amanda, Zack and Melissa winced back as Bradley sat bolt-upright in bed; Milo, however, looked maddeningly insouciant. "Well, yeah. The instructions say that for maximum effectiveness, you're supposed to inject it right into your thigh muscle."

"I know, but—you did this in front of _HOW_ many people?!"

Amanda and Zack at least had the decency to look awkward; Melissa, however, just shrugged. "Don't feel embarrassed. I've seen the paramedics cut Milo's clothes off more times than I can count."

Bradley laid back down and silently willed his mattress to swallow him into oblivion.

Just then, _The_ _Doctor Zone Files_ theme song began to play. "Oh! Excuse me," Milo said, taking out his cell phone and heading out of the room.

The others turned back to Bradley, who had a distinctly sour look on his face. "Hey, don't worry," Amanda said. "I don't think you'll need to be here for more than a day or so."

"I just—ugh, _Milo_ —"

"Hey, I don't want to jump down your throat while you're still on your sickbed, but Milo _helped_ you today," Zack said. "Don't go sounding all annoyed at him."

"Well, no _offense,_ but maybe I wouldn't have almost killed myself if Milo hadn't been—"

"—sitting _waaay_ across the cafeteria from you, after _you_ purposely moved outside of Murphy's Law's reach?"

Bradley looked up. Unlike Zack, Melissa honestly looked amused. Bradley felt his face heat up.

"...You don't know that. I mean—what exactly is its range, anyway? It's not something that you can measure, is it?"

She gave a casual shrug. "Not exactly, but in a crowded room, with a hundred other people between you and him? Sorry, Bradley; I'm pretty sure that this mistake was all yours."

Bradley looked away.

There was about ten seconds worth of silence. "I was actually really impressed by the way Milo handled everything," Amanda said finally. "He really seemed to know what he was doing."

"And he was really worried about you. We all were," Mort added.

Bradley remained silent, but he was thinking, once again, about how close he had come to possible death—even though the thought made his stomach twist into a painful knot. (That or it was another wave of nausea from the peanut butter.)

As he was contemplating that, Milo returned. "Funny coincidence! The paramedics just brought my dad here too!"

"Oh, no! What happened?"

"He was a little fuzzy on the details, but somehow he and some raccoons got locked in a freezer together! I hope that he doesn't need as many stitches as last time. Anyway, I'm gonna go get our room set up for him. Feel better, alright?"

"Um—Milo, wait."

He was already half out the door, his hand raised in a wave, with Melissa and Zack getting up to follow him. Bradley hesitated, scratched the back of his neck nervously, and then said, "I just wanted to say, um...thank you. For, you know...helping me back there."

Milo scoffed and waved his hand. "Hey, I told you. It was nothing."

" _No,_ it wasn't _nothing_ _,_ " Bradley said, and to his own surprise he found himself getting angry again. "It was my _life._ That's not nothing to me."

"Well, of _course,_ I didn't—I mean, you'd do the same for me, right?"

Bradley paused. "...If you were having a severe allergic reaction and I wasn't having one at the same time, yes, I would donate one of my autoinjectors to save your life." He spoke very carefully, to avoid promising anything that he might regret later.

"There, you see? It was no big deal. We all get the chance to help each other eventually. That's just how life works."

Bradley was surprised by how philosophical he sounded. "Well, uh...whenever I get the chance to help _you,_ I...hope it's not when you're almost dying."

"Hey, now, don't focus too much on the 'almost dying' part. Think about the _living_ part! Sure, the peanut butter almost killed you, but just remember how the peanut butter _tasted,_ you know?"

Milo then surprised Bradley by reaching out and putting his hand on his shoulder. Bradley shrank away from his touch on instinct. "...Actually, I thought it tasted awful."

"That's because it was mixed with apples and _tofu bacon._ "

"Hey, Amanda, do I criticize _your_ dietary choices?!"

Milo shrugged, taking his hand off Bradley's shoulder. "Well, anyway. Just think about what I said. And get well soon!"

"Yeah, see ya!"

"Bye!"

Milo, Zack and Melissa left. Bradley exhaled, still feeling supremely awkward about everything.

Once they were gone, Amanda suddenly went "Oh!" and took out a cell phone—it took Bradley a second to recognize it as his own. "I almost forgot, I swore to your parents that I'd call as soon as you woke up! They're already rushing back from their trip to the Quad-State Area."

Bradley recoiled a bit. He really didn't want to hear his mother crying right now.

As Amanda turned around and began to call them, Bradley met his other friend's eye. "Hey, Mort?" he said quietly.

"Yeah?"

" _Please_ tell me that I at least wasn't wearing my _Stumbleberry Finkbat_ boxers to school today."

"...Alright, I won't tell you."

Bradley groaned.


End file.
